'Remarkable' 2011 weather sets N.J. record for wettest year ever

It was inevitable, but now it’s official: the weather of 2011 made New Jersey history.

The state smashed its record for the wettest year, and while the flooding rains and burying snows made most of the headlines last year, data shows it was also the third warmest ever as well.

"The word that keeps rolling off my tongue is remarkable," said state climatologist David Robinson. "We’ve seen many extreme years in New Jersey, but to have such a rich variety of extremes within one calendar year is just quite remarkable."

After a colder than normal January, the state experienced 11 straight months of above average temperatures in 2011. New Jersey finished the year with an average temperature of 55.2 degrees, making it the third warmest since 1895, when reliable data began being kept, and just 0.4 degrees behind the all-time record set in 1996.

"I think it definitely tells a story of increasing warmth in New Jersey," Robinson said. "Eight of the top ten warmest years have occurred since the 1990s."

And don’t be fooled by the blast of bitterly cold air and blustery conditions the state has started 2012 with — by the end of the week, temperatures are once again expected to reach the 50s, well-above average for January.

"In this type of pattern, things are very progressive. It’ll be in and it’ll be out," said Mark Paquette, a meteorologist at Accuweather. "Until you see a major pattern change coming I think you’re going to see this continue."

Though 2012 may begin where 2011 left off in terms of temperature trends, it will likely be hard to match the combination of rain and snow the state experienced last year.

Robinson said the state recorded an average of 64.84 inches of rain and snow melt in 2011, easily surpassing the previous record of 59.98 set in 1996 to make it the wettest year on record since 1895.

West Milford topped the state for individual totals, where a whopping 90.65 inches was recorded, more than two-and-a-half feet above average, he said.

The combination of warmer and wetter weather may not be coincidence, either.

Earlier this year, Nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released a report contending that global warming is causing more extreme weather events.

While he said the topic still needs far more study, temperature and weather extremes in the United States in recent years are beginning to make Robinson a believer.

"It’s not just that it has emerged so visibly in the last decade -- the last several decades have been wetter than they were at the start of the last century. We’re simply getting more and more heavy precipitation events," he said. "These things are in the eye of the beholder and take time to evolve, but I’m becoming more convinced that there is a connection there."